Why No Other Reality-Dating Show Has Ever Touched The Bachelor (but Ready for Love Might Be the One)

I have always pictured the people in charge of new reality-TV shows as a cluster of insecure seventh-graders at a dance. Their outfits are painfully overthought, and they're practically burning calories trying to affect an air of confidence and cool. Then, bam: Some new kid walks in with their hat on backward or their grungy flannel-shirt (then they'll be cool.

That's why every reality hit is trailed by a gaggle of breathless knockoffs. Of course, you and I, with our own shameful teenage stashes of uncharacteristic tube tops or hemp necklaces, already know how this story ends: It never looks quite the same as it did on Popular Erica.

When it comes to TV, there's nowhere this little exercise has failed harder than it has in efforts to duplicate The Bachelor. Oh, we have our fun with the Olympics of spray-tanned sobbing, but credit where credit's due: No dating reality show has ever been able to touch it. (We'll see if Ready for Love can change all that tonight; read Gena's Q+A with one of the romance-seeking guys here.)

Why hasn't it ever really worked out for reality romance? Well, part of the reason The Bachelor dominated out of the gate is that it was the first show to ever go genuine. You probably think of it as the grandaddy of all dating shows, but the catastrophic Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire actually aired two years beforehand. Oh, Darva Conger. I love how then "multi-millionaire" warranted an entire show about one man—these days, that's just the basic threshold you have to clear to be in Patti Stanger's club.

Anyway, when The Bachelor and its full-haired centerpiece Alex Michel came along, it became clear that the key was making sure audiences invested as much in the earnest, sometimes insane, and often drunk women as much as they did the dude.

But you know that thing I said earlier about buying the cool kid's hat in a slightly different color, just to cover your ass? That's where things got a little out of hand. Producers didn't just buy the hat in a different color—they tagged it with spraypaint and tried to wear it as a bag. Multi-millionaire and Bachelor gave way to Average Joe, in which a construction worker with granite abs and a limited vocabulary preached love and forever while lying about his net worth to women who definitely cared about it.

Then an even more desperate hanger-on thought: What if we deceived the women about something else? And that's how we got Mr. Personality, in which all the guys wore masks and got bossed around by host Monica Lewinsky. And that's how we got Average Joe, in which contestants just went ahead and allowed themselves to be marketed as mediocre-looking/eventually upstaged by Axe-commercial rejects.

Duping is the doping of reality shows—it totally took over the game. Meanwhile, The Bachelor chugged along smugly, laughing off those sad types who show up to the dance drunk and succeed at hogging the spotlight for one night only (looking at you, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila). Nobody ever really touched them. In the meantime, they built a veritable farm system of recurring hookup enthusiasts, many of whom found fan followings long before they found a life partner.

But Ready for Love might just be that rookie who can give The Bachelor a run for its money. It caters to Stanger fans with the matchmaker aspect, making the whole thing feel more like a scientific quest than a hot-tub crapshoot. It's got the creative support of Eva Longoria and Bill and Giuliana Rancic, a sweepingly romantic feel, and a lead-in from The Voice. Something tells me that, as he tends lovingly to the Bachelor red roses he grows himself, Chris Harrison's sunhat is trembling just slightly with nervousness. Maybe it's time for some healthy competition outside the mansion, for once.

Are you going to give Ready for Love a chance? And would you watch more reality dating shows if they weren't so cheesy?